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New-Merican Society
The New-Merican Society is an ultra-nationalist, faux libertarian political party and military group located in the Badlands Territory. Originally the result of a movement motivated by nostalgia and a longing for the values of the past, the New-Merican Society has since managed to gain control of Tall Town and spread its message further through joining the American Northern Army. It is also known for its odd habit of encouraging values such as independence and freedom while also advocating nigh-blind patriotism. History Origins The New-Merican Society's origins date back to 2215, when a farmer made an amazing discovery. In North Dakota, a sustenance farmer named Arnold was plowing his fields with his brahmin one day in the early fall. He wanted to put in one final crop to weather the harsh winter. However, as he and his brahmin were plowing the fields, the plow hit something solid. Arnold called his son over with a shovel, and they dug. It turned out that the farmer had discovered the entrance of an old missile silo, hidden beneath his farm. However, Arnold was unaware of what the place really was and decided to claim it as his own and give tours of the place. For a short time, the missile silo became one of the most popular (and few) tourist destinations in North Dakota. Arnold and his family became quite wealthy by 2214 and were able to live comfortably without having to scratch a living from the earth. However, the farmers' missile silo drew the attention of more unsavory types, one of them being Georgie, a raider from up north in Bismarck. Coming to the missile silo as a tourist to scope out the place, Georgie was impressed by its sheer size. Going back to Bismarck, Georgie reported her findings back to her raider chief, an ignorant blowhard named Blunt. Blunt was a powerful raider with a respectable gang but also had weakness for pre-War artifacts and other relics of America. Georgie's findings fascinated Blunt, and he demanded to go there himself. He did and liked the look of the place. The next time Blunt visited the missile silo, he was accompanied by his raider gang, the Stars & Stripes. Blunt and the Stars & Stripes managed to evict Arnold and his family from the land peacefully and took control of the farmer's house and the missile silo. Blunt saw all the history in the underground silo, now his, and read many of the leftover books in the silo, once read by members of the staff of the facility. The books were incomplete and degraded, but they gave Blunt a new image of "Merica": a bombastic, powerful force for good. This sent Blunt into a crisis, as he, in good conscience, could not go on being a raider and keeping this image of "Merica". He confided in Georgie, who considered this with much thought. Five weeks after taking the missile silo, Blunt decided to make an announcement. The Stars & Stripes were to become vigilantes instead of raiders. At this, a roar of discontent came from the assembled people. One of the raiders, a sneak by the name of Carrow, yelled up at Blunt thay he had gone soft and he was leaving. In response, Blunt fired his revolver into the air to try to stop Carrow. Carrow stopped at this. Seeing this was just a ploy, Carrow wheeled around, pulled out his 10mm pistol, and shot several bullets into Blunt's chest. Following this violent exchange, blood was spilled and both Carrow and Blunt ended up dead. The Stars & Stripes were divided on what to do next. Georgie proceeded to take charge of the gang and whip them back in shape. Going Legit In the year after Blunt's death, Georgie began to scale back the Stars & Stripes raiding and rebuilt the farm above the gang's base in the missile silo. This began the slow process of the Stars & Stripes "going legit". Part of this process was changing the group's name to the New-Merican Society, representing them abandoning their raider roots and embracing Blunt's ideal of "Merica". This eventually led to them becoming vigilantes, as Blunt always intended them to become. This led to more recruitment among small settlements and the expansion of the New-Merican Society throughout parts of North Dakota. The Society's feel-good messages of nostalgia and ultra-patriotism combined with its "free speech" rules were attractive to many new members. By 2220, they numbered over a thousand in all. This expanded membership led to the group becoming more democratic and the leader of the Society, the President, was voted on by all members. A modified American flag, with one star symbolizing the individual, was made the offical flag of the New-Merican Society in 2222. However, this proved not enough for many. As many small settlements were often preyed on by raiders, the new President of the New-Merican Society, Neil Perry, felt it was necessary to raise a militia to fight them and protect settlements under the Society's protection. This armed wing of the Society was created in 2223 and soon gained immense power in the group. The New-Merican Society's overall power increased accordingly, but they only came into relevance in 2225. Rule of Tall Town The New-Merican Society was riled up at the end of 2224. A warlord from Tall Town named Bayonetta was raiding their settlements and burning their fields. This was more than some random raiders. The President and most of the leadership decided to investigate Tall Town and were surprised to find it dissatisfied with its leaders and exhausted. The "Era of Dictators" had gone on for almost twenty years, and the people were tired. Seeing this, thr President then made a bold statement: the New-Merican Society should "liberate" Tall Town and force them to join them. The President gathered up about sixty fighters from the Society's ranks and marched on Tall Town in 2225. Entering Bismarck, the New-Mericans made their way through raider infested ruins before coming to Tall Town. Bayonetta, seeing the small army outside, knew where this was going and led her raiders out of Tall Town to attack. The New-Mericans were not expecting such ferocity and lost several people in the initial volley. However, Bayonetta's raiders were too few to make a difference and within ten minutes were either killed or sent running into the ruins of Bismarck. The New-Mericans, drunk on victory, marched into Tall Town and were declared saviors by the town's residents. Many in the Society wanted to just loot the place and leave, but President Neil Perry forebade that. He and his cabinet proceeded to ask twenty militiamen to stay behind with him to maintain order in Tall Town so they could hold "democratic elections" the following year. Twenty men grudgingly agreed. In the next year, the New-Merican Society achieved immense traction in Tall Town, as the idea of democracy and "free speech" was quite attractive after two decades of dictators and warlords. The New-Merican Society put forth their president as a candidate in the election while the newly reformed Tall Town Militia also put forth its leader as a candidate. The campaign was not a hard one, and the New-Mericans won by a large margin. Upon winning, President (and Mayor) Perry declared the Tall Town Militia the "New-Merican Milita" and pledged to integrate it into the Society's armed wing. Surprisingly, this did not result in violence as the Militia was not willing to start another war. Many in the Society, throughout many small settlements and homesteads, applauded this as a sign of the resurgence of "Merica" and the superiority of New-Merican Society's doctrine. However, these rural members of the Society would soon learn what it meant to be marginalized as after the 2226, the New-Mericans in Tall Town were the ones calling the shots. This alienated many in the North Dakota countryside, and the Society's membership there declined. However, this was not the case in Tall Town, where many "Free Speech" laws and ordinances were being passed. After the election, anyone who was anything in Tall Town was part of the New-Merican Society. This meant, as long as you didn't directly threaten anybody with pain or death, you could say pretty much whatever you wanted. The only real restrictions were on some weapons and chems, but those were only mildly enforced by the New-Mericans' armed wing, who preferred a hands off approach. The new New-Merican Society in Tall Town had vastly different members than previously. These new members were signicantly richer than the ones before them and a large minority of them owned slaves, mostly for scavenging, farming, or sexual purposes. The rights of these slaves were purposely ignored so as to not rustle any feathers. In the next decade, the New-Merican Society's focus was mostly economic and domestic, repairing Tall Town's infastructure and economy as well as reestablishing trade with neighboring Smithsforge. As the Tall Town grew and became safer, caravan traffic increased. This attracted raiders and set up the New-Mericans' next big conflict. The raider attacks soon grew so common that they could not be ignored or bribed and the New-Merican President (and Tall Town's mayor) decided to declare a "War on Raiders" in 2231 in order to drive raiders out of the Bismarck ruins. The New-Merican Milita would be the ones to carry this out. This proved easier said than done. Even the smaller gangs put up a good fight and it took five years to drive out the raiders, even with superior equipment and help from Smithsforge. The New-Mericans did succeed in driving out the major raiders by 2236. What were left of the raider gangs formed into the Sons of Bismarck and still plague North Dakota into the modern day. At the time though, with the raider threat in Bismarck nullified, the New-Merican Society figured that their War on Raiders had succeeded. This proved wrong. Along with other "civilized" groups, the New-Mericans only succeeded in royally pissing off the raiders of the area and contributing to the start of the Great Raider Wars. This did not involve the Tall Town and the New-Merican Society at first, but raiders returned to Tall Town with a vengeance in 2244, attacking the outer parts of towns and harassing caravans. This caused Tall Town's economy to go bust and the people to become resentful of the Society's War on Raiders and their use of "soft power" to put a stranglehold on Tall Town. So, a new faction rose to oppose the New-Merican Society in 2248, the People's Alliance. The People's Alliance's attitudes toward social reform and abolition worried the New-Merican Society but they did not at first give the party any mind. This attitude changed when the People's Alliance won a third of the vote for Tall Town's mayor in 2250. The Society knew changes had to be made, or they would be replaced. Some members of the Society wanted to actually give in to the People's Alliance's demands and outlaw slavery and institute social reforms. This was quickly shut down by other members of the Society, who instead decided to go in a radically different approach. They wanted to bank on the patriotic vote by putting all their chips in and allying with other settlements to create a force to better win the Great Raider Wars. This was when the concept of the American Northern Army first was thought of. The group the Society wanted to collaborate with was the Plains Militia, a strong militia in Belfield that had fended off raiders for many years and were once very powerful. Immediately after the next mayoral election (2250), the New-Merican Society sent representatives to Belfield to negotiate the formation of a new army. The Plains Militia's current general and the town's mayor opposed forming a new army, but the common people and the Plains Militia's famed former general Chris Richardson supported the New-Merican Society. This eventually triumphed over the mayor and general's viewpoints, and the alliance that would become the American Northern Army was formally created. Great Raider Wars The name of the army was made in in 2251, the American Northern Army. Also, the first ANA flag was made at this time and was inspired by the New-Merican's flag. Soon enough, the ANA began to make moves against the raider groups of the area, primarily the Motorhead Gang, the Wilson Gang, and the Sons of Bismarck. This brought the Great Raider Wars to new heights and worked out in the New-Merican Society's favor. Tall Town prospered as the new power base of the ANA. After a few years of continuous war, the raiders' resistance began to break down. The Motorhead Gang was completely broken in North Dakota by 2253, and the Wilson Gang and Sons of Bismarck fled further south. The other smaller raider groups either broke down or flew under the radar. The last battles of the Great Raider Wars against the Sons of Bismarck occurred in 2254, and the New-Merican Society declared themselves victorious, to the resentment of the other groups in the ANA. Also, many caravaners and wanderers brought news of fighting still taking place to the south. The New-Merican Society did not care about this, as they were primarily focused on rebuilding and capitalizing on their victories. Expansion and Conflicts The end of the Great Raider Wars brought a new era of prosperity and expansion to the New-Merican Society due to its prominence in the American Northern Army. The New-Merican Society began to spread to other places under the ANA's fold such as Belfield. This spread the Society's "Free Speech" laws and practices. This continued even when the Badlands Roughriders joined in 2256. The New-Merican Society and Tall Town prospered. In 2260, emissaries from Custer's American Army and the Dakota Regulators arrived from the south in Tall Town, both hoping to gain the support of the ANA in their war. Originally, the negotiations were neutral but the Society directly interfered, accusing Custer of being a dictator and insulting his representatives. The Dakota Regulators eventually joined the ANA and tensions with Custer went up to a new level. The New-Merican prepared for war, slandering Custer in every way possible and creating a huge militiary buildup in the ANA. After it was found that Custer did not want a war and the rest of the ANA accepted this, many in Tall Town and the New-Merican Society were beside themselves with fury and only took this with gritted teeth. For the next twenty years, it was business as usual with a slow decline in support for the ANA as well as a reemergence of "gangs" in the ruins of Bismarck. The New-Merican Society did nothing to stop this, preferring to sit on their ring-pulls rather than start another war. A new, paradigm shifting war began in 2280, but not as the Society expected. The war was two-sided, with Custer in the south and the Canadian Liberation Army in the north. The Generals' War has been an unsatisfying one for the New-Mericans, as there was little money to be made, and the CLA has begun straying dangerously close to their territory. However, they are in too deep to stop now and instead go on, hoping that their vision of "Merica" will become reality. Government When it started, the New-Merican Society was a fairly loosely run organization, with all members having a say in the democratic process and having the freedom to run their own business, be employed by a business of their choice, or even run a slave farm. The president served as the Society's nominal leader and spokesperson and was elected democratically. After taking control of Tall Town, the New-Merican Society has had to buckle down for practical reasons. The organization became more a political party and now has many different positions below president, such as vice president, secretary, or treasurer. Because of this, a sort of "hierarchy" has formed out of the richest members, who are now the only members who can fund their own campaigns for positions. Luckily for them, the lower members of the Society are wistfully unaware of this and carry on like normal. The American Northern Army now also has an important role in the Society, and many members of the New-Merican Society have served in the ANA at one point. Currently, the Society's top rungs and bureaucracy are run by a hierarchy, but through voting, the common man still has a say. The individual Society member feels that he is his own boss and doesn't have much patience for overbearing leaders. Culture Culture is one of the main driving forces behind the New-Merican Society. The Society was originally created to perpetuate the dim image of a freedom-loving gun-toting pre-War "Merica". This has persisted even after the Society has become better informed about the pre-War world and learned that "Merica" was really America. Nonetheless, the New-Merican Society's culture has changed over time, becoming more militaristic and organized after taking Tall Town. However, some things have not changed such as the Society love of freedom and the concept of "Merica". Pre-War artifacts are not that important to the Society though, and scavenging is frowned upon. This contrasts sharply with their origins as raiders and scavengers. Public forums and debates are a popular way of discussing policy among the New-Merican Society, a side effect of their love of direct democracy. This tradition of discussion has led to an unusual amount of "civic duty" among the members of the New-Merican Society, a rare thing in the wasteland. Chems, among other things, are allowed in the Society's territory as an individual freedom. The chem problem has not become very large yet, but there have been moves to try to outlaw some types of chems such as psycho and jet. None of these have succeeded yet. Mutants are regarded positively by the New-Merican Society, and many ghouls and a few super mutants are among the Society's ranks. Anti-mutant sentiment is still around to some extent but is mostly confined to ghoul fights. Equipment The New-Merican Society gets most of its equipment either from Tall Town itself or Smithsforge. This includes weapons, armor, and clothing. Most of their equipment is standard in the American Northern Army, such as service rifles and military fatigues. Notable Individuals President/Mayor Myles Benteen The current president of the New-Merican Society and the mayor of Tall Town, Myles Benteen is possibly the most powerful man in ANA territory, holding sway over its largest town and faction. Benteen is heavily partisan, seeing the Society interests over the rest of the ANA's. He was elected on the more radical side of the Society, so Benteen is a bit more up in arms over "freedoms" than many would want. Benteen is however compentent in management and has made Tall Town economically prosperous again. Vice President Talia Benteen's vice president, Talia is from Belfield and serves as a voice of the Society outside Tall Town. However, Talia really only serves as another pretty face and was only really elected for her looks and demographic. She does very little in the way of actual administration. General Marcus Williams Marcus Williams, the hero of Logan's Folly and General of the North, is the leader of the ANA's Army of North and a prominent member of the New-Merican Society. Although he holds no formal position in the Society, Williams is well respected and holds much credibility. Mayor Dolores Bellweather The mayor of Belfield, Bellweather feels that the Society passed her over as vice president in favor of Talia. The truth is, Bellweather is more needed as mayor than vice president and does a good job of it, even if it is defending Belfield's "traditional values". Lawrence Vandada A rare exception to the violent tendencies of his family, Lawrence has been a prominent New-Merican and businessman in Tall Town for almost two decades. From his hotel he fundraises for many causes, the foremost of which being the American Northern Army. He has so far avoided running in any elections, but has been following them closely. Quotes By About Category:Groups Category:Badlands Category:Communities